Looking to buy a nose hair trimmer, wearable neck air conditioner or holographic fish tank from the always quirky Hammacher Schlemmer catalog?
Time may be running out.
Last week, the Chicago company laid off 21 employees — most of its staff — in a brief video conference call, according to four former employees who lost their jobs.
“They told us that Hammacher was going to cease operations, and that all of our positions were effectively gone,” said Carol-Joy Kilpatrick, 50, of Tinley Park, senior art director at Hammacher Schlemmer for 19 years. “I’m devastated.”
It is unclear what the company’s plans are for the venerable brand, the oldest catalog retailer in the U.S. Hammacher Schlemmer, which was acquired last year by S5 Equity, a California-based investment firm, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Deposited in nearly 50 million mailboxes each year, the most recent catalog was canceled before going to the printer this month, Kilpatrick said, a first in her two-decade tenure with the company.
Two vendors also say they are owed money for products they supplied to Hammacher Schlemmer.
James Kuo, who owns Universal Resources, a Taiwan-based trading company that has been supplying Hammacher with products since 2008, said in an email Wednesday that he is owed $1.178 million for a list of 39 products he delivered to the company dating back to April.
The Hammacher Schlemmer website remains open for business, where items supplied by Kuo — ranging from a 6-foot inflatable kickball dartboard to a teak shower seat — are prominently featured.
“Since the beginning of this year, they have continuously delayed payments,” Kuo said in the email. “Although there have been occasional partial payments, the amounts have always fallen far short. The last payment was made two months ago, but after paying only a small portion, they have completely ignored the remaining balance.”
Some smaller product vendors have similar claims.
Suzanne Fontaine struck a deal in February to sell her Playamigo bag/backrest chair through Hammacher Schlemmer, a potential breakthrough for the small business owner.
Fontaine bootstrapped the launch of Playamigo in 2021. The chairs are made in China and shipped to a warehouse in St. Louis. She operates the business remotely from her home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
In May, she shipped 120 of the chairs to Hammacher Schlemmer’s Ohio warehouses at the wholesale price of about $45 each, which the company initially marketed at $99.95. The chair, which is sold as the Sit and Store Ground Chair on the Hammacher site, has since been marked down to $69.95.
Hammacher contacted Fontaine in June and said the item wasn’t selling very well and they wanted to exercise an option to send back 20% of the shipment. But she has yet to receive the 20 chairs or the balance due to her, which would be about $4,500.
“I’m not getting any answers about this late payment,” Fontaine said. “And as a small business owner, this really means a lot to me.”
Founded as a New York City hardware store in 1848, Hammacher Schlemmer started sending out catalogs in 1881. Over the years, the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog became renowned for gadgets, gizmos and innovative products. On its website, the company claims to have introduced everything from the pop-up toaster in 1930 to the telephone answering machine in 1968, among other notable rollouts.
The offerings have also included fantasy items that rarely if ever sell, but make the catalog a must-browse escape for some recipients. Topping that list in the current catalog is a $75,000 golf cart hovercraft for skimming over fairways, bunkers and water hazards alike.
Hammacher Schlemmer’s retailing history is so significant, Duke University announced in June it is creating a collection of records documenting the evolution of the iconic mail-order catalog company. The last 45 years of that history have taken place in Chicago.
In 1980, J. Roderick MacArthur, son of billionaire insurance magnate John D. MacArthur and a collectible marketer who owned the Bradford Exchange in Niles, bought Hammacher Schlemmer for a reported $3.5 million, relocating the headquarters to Chicago.
Under his ownership, Hammacher opened a first floor store at Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue in 1983, with its corporate headquarters located in the office above, according to a history timeline on the company’s website. MacArthur died in 1984, but the East Coast import planted roots in Chicago, where catalog retailing was essentially born.
In 2005, the Tribune store closed and Hammacher moved its offices to Niles, where it was housed with the co-owned Bradford Exchange in a former car dealership along Milwaukee Avenue, just across the street from the Golf Mill Shopping Center, according to the company’s timeline and published reports.
Hammacher Schlemmer closed its only remaining store, the New York City flagship, in 2023.
The companies, which went under the Bradford Hammacher Group corporate umbrella through an employee stock ownership plan in 2013, decided to part ways last year, retaining Hilco to sell off the Hammacher Schlemmer business.
S5, a private equity firm owned by the Steinhafel family, the Milwaukee-based furniture retailers, bought Hammacher Schlemmer for an undisclosed price in August 2024, with financing provided by Gordon Brothers. The Boston-based financial firm did not respond to a request for comment regarding the status of that investment.
David Steinhafel, managing partner of S5 Equity, is a fourth-generation scion of the nearly century-old furniture retailer, which opened its first Chicago-area Steinhafels store in 2011.
Since acquiring Hammacher Schlemmer, Steinhafel has implemented a number of changes, including an initiative to transition from the storied catalogs to a primarily digital business model, a strategy outlined in a 2024 news release announcing the purchase.
The move follows broader trends as e-commerce continues to ramp up, with U.S. online sales projected to top $1.25 trillion in 2025, a 5% increase tamped down by President Trump’s tariffs, according to eMarketer.
Meanwhile, the mail-order industry, which generated about $252 billion in U.S. revenue last year, is projected to drop to $233 billion by 2029, a 7.5% decline driven in large part by increased competition from e-commerce, according to a report to IBISWorld.
“Mail-order retailers have begun offering their catalogs and products online to appeal to younger demographics,” the IBISWorld report concludes. “Businesses that adopt online sales practices will benefit in the coming years.”
In keeping with the strategy, Hammacher Schlemmer cut back on the number of catalogs it mailed out under the new owners, but digital sales did not take off as hoped, leading to sharp revenue declines, according to a former longtime employee involved in business operations at the company, who asked not to disclose his name for fear of retribution.
Steinhafel did not respond to requests for comment this week.
In March, S5 Equity bought another catalog and online retailer, Minnesota-based Heartland America, for an undisclosed amount, calling it a “strategic bolt-on” for its previous Hammacher Schlemmer acquisition in a news release announcing the purchase.
Heartland CEO Kendra Reichenau took on a dual role at Hammacher Schlemmer, traveling regularly between Minnesota and Illinois to lead both companies.
Reichenau did not respond to a request for comment.
In April, Hammacher Schlemmer laid off nearly a dozen employees, according to John Gagliardi, the company’s creative manager of 18 years, who was let go during the downsizing. It was a harbinger of things to come.
The following month, the company and its two dozen or so remaining corporate employees — buyers, accountants, copywriters et al — relocated to a new office on Cumberland Avenue near O’Hare in Chicago, according to former employees.
A new Hammacher Schlemmer direct-to-consumer website was launched in July.
Then on Aug. 20, the company sent most corporate employees an email regarding a mandatory 3 p.m. meeting. During the brief Microsoft Teams video conference, which was run by Reichenau and Heartland CFO Bobbie Fischer, 21 Hammacher employees — the vast majority of the staff — were laid off.
“You kind of knew in the air that things weren’t that great, but I think myself and most people thought we would at least be able to get through fourth quarter,” said Steven Wilk, 40, of South Elgin, a Hammacher copywriter for 9 ½ years, who was among the layoffs. ”We just placed all these orders for Christmas trees.”
rchannick@chicagotribune.com